Another day, another article, another list. No one's explaining anything, and they're not telling you why these remedies are on the psoriatic arthritis remedies list.
There seems to be a lot of “copy-paste research” going on out here. But there are real clinical trials and studies that can help you understand psoriatic arthritis. Let me show you what the scientific literature says and help you understand it so you can decide your next step. And if you want the fuller lifestyle picture, including diet, exercise, sleep, and real testimonies, we already covered that here: Exploring The Best Natural Remedies For Psoriatic Arthritis. This article goes a layer deeper into the actual clinical trials behind the remedies.
Why Most “Natural Remedies” Lists Say the Same Thing
Search “natural remedies for psoriatic arthritis” and you'll find the same 15 to 22 items on every major site: turmeric, fish oil, Epsom salts, capsaicin, acupuncture, acupressure, apple cider vinegar. It's the same list, reshuffled. None of those articles tell you whether that particular remedy has actually been tested in a psoriatic arthritis clinical trial, or whether it's borrowed from research on a different condition entirely.
It's important to understand that research on psoriatic arthritis is not the same as rheumatoid arthritis. The mechanisms, though similar (they're both inflammatory), are still not the same thing. I'm going to explain what the evidence is for items that help psoriatic arthritis directly, and then other items that could help, but lack direct evidence for psoriatic arthritis. The main reason for these repetitive lists is that there's not much research done specifically on remedies for psoriatic arthritis. That's why they're borrowing from rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.
The Gut-Skin-Joint Connection: What the Research Shows
Here's something most of the remedy list articles don't address: the connection between your gut and your joints. Gut health is fundamental to your immune system health and your overall health. Of course it is; it's the interface between your environment and your body.
Psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease show up together far more often than you would predict just by chance. Researchers have been trying to understand why.
A 2020 review by Dr. Bridget Myers and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, published in Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology, laid out the theory. Gut bacteria in people with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis show a distinct pattern of dysbiosis (an imbalance between helpful and harmful bacterial populations), and that imbalance is tied to intestinal permeability, altered immune signaling, and changes in the short-chain fatty acids that keep inflammation in check.
A smaller 2024 study by Dr. Gustavo Amorim and colleagues in Brazil, published in European Journal of Rheumatology, sequenced stool samples from 30 patients with psoriatic disease, 15 of whom had psoriatic arthritis. Patients with PsA showed significantly higher levels of Bacteroides bacteria than patients with psoriasis alone. This kind of analysis of the gut microbiome is intensive. This was a small study of just 30 people. They didn't find the lower bacterial diversity seen in other studies. And the question is still open: does the joint disease cause the dysbiosis, or does the dysbiosis cause the joint disease? No one's answered this question yet.
One clinical trial did test an intervention here. Dr. Mihaela Buhaș and colleagues in Romania ran a 12-week trial giving psoriasis patients (including some with psoriatic arthritis) a combination of probiotics and prebiotic fiber alongside their topical treatment. Published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, the supplemented group showed better skin scores, lower inflammatory markers, and a shift toward a healthier gut microbiome pattern than the control group. It wasn't randomized, so it's not the strongest possible design.
Instinctively, we know that the gut is involved with autoimmune diseases, with leaky gut being a disease feature that needs to be solved. So it makes sense that feeding the gut better does improve it. Your instincts are right here. I would say that probiotics and prebiotic fiber are just a good start towards a whole intervention that would make a difference. If you want to go deeper on healing a leaky gut specifically, our guide to lowering zonulin naturally walks through the science step by step. For more on feeding the gut well day to day, these 25 high-fiber plant foods are a good place to start. Let's turn our attention to a couple of trials that did look at dietary changes.
Does Diet Actually Change Psoriatic Arthritis? Three Trials That Tested It Directly
It's one thing to add an anti-inflammatory food to your standard American diet. (Don't expect much for results.) It's a whole other thing to switch your entire diet to anti-inflammatory foods. Let's take a look at what they found.
A ketogenic diet outperformed a Mediterranean diet on inflammation markers.
Dr. Vaia Lambadiari and colleagues in Athens ran a randomized crossover trial: 26 patients with obesity and psoriatic arthritis followed a Mediterranean diet for 8 weeks, then, after a washout period, a ketogenic diet for 8 weeks (or the reverse order). Published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences, both diets produced weight loss. But only the ketogenic phase produced a significant drop in disease activity scores and in the inflammatory cytokines IL-6, IL-17, and IL-23. The Mediterranean diet didn't move those markers significantly in this particular trial.
This is a little bit surprising, but when you stop to think about it, it does make some sense. You may want to check out our zonulin and leaky gut article to understand this in more depth.
Zonulin is a protein marker that shows up in your bloodstream when you have leaky gut. Gluten is associated with higher levels of zonulin. The Mediterranean diet doesn't eliminate gluten, so it might exacerbate something like psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
A keto diet is going to reduce gluten, and that may be a key for some people. What does this mean for you? It means that a whole food plant-based approach might work for you, but not one that's high in gluten. Check out our zonulin article for more details on how to naturally heal a leaky gut.
Weight loss helped joints. Adding fish oil to the diet didn't add much on top of it.
Dr. Beatriz Leite and colleagues in São Paulo ran the DIETA trial: 97 psoriatic arthritis patients randomized to a hypocaloric diet plus placebo, a hypocaloric diet plus 3 grams per day of omega-3, or placebo alone, for 12 weeks. Published in Advances in Rheumatology, the diet-plus-placebo group showed the clearest improvement in joint disease activity scores. The group that added omega-3 lost more weight and body fat, but the extra fish oil didn't add a significant joint benefit beyond what the calorie-controlled diet alone provided.
A very low-energy diet, and nearly 19% of body weight lost, roughly doubled remission rates.
Dr. Eva Klingberg and colleagues at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden went even further. Forty-one patients with PsA and obesity followed a very low energy diet, about 640 calories a day, for 12 to 16 weeks, then gradually reintroduced food. Published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, the median weight loss was 18.7 kg, about 18.6% of starting body weight. Tender and swollen joint counts, CRP, psoriasis body surface area, and patient-reported pain and fatigue all improved significantly. Minimal disease activity nearly doubled, from 29% to 54%. And the more weight patients lost, the more they improved. That's a dose-response pattern, exactly what you want to see if the effect is real.
This is a before-and-after kind of study, with no control group in this one (the researchers say plainly that randomizing people to a genuinely difficult 640-calorie diet versus care-as-usual wasn't practical), so we can't rule out that some improvement would have happened anyway. But going from 29% to 54% remission in the study group is a very impressive result.
So here's what to focus on: reducing overall calorie load and losing excess weight seems to be doing real work on joint inflammation in psoriatic arthritis, and this last result is the biggest single finding in this whole article. That's not as flashy as a supplement, but it's what the actual PsA-specific trials found.
Omega-3 and Curcumin: Strong Research, Just Not in PsA Patients Yet
Omega-3 oils and curcumin are on all the lists of supplements to help with the joint pain of psoriatic arthritis. There's no direct evidence for them helping, but there is a lot of evidence with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a related autoimmune joint condition. So it's expected that there's some crossover, but it's not direct proof.
Dr. James Kremer and colleagues at Albany Medical College ran one of the highest-dose fish oil trials on record: 66 rheumatoid arthritis patients given either 130 mg/kg/day of omega-3 fatty acids (9 g omega-3s for a 154-lb (70 kg) person) or a corn oil placebo, published in Arthritis & Rheumatism. The fish oil group saw a significant drop in tender joint count and morning stiffness, and some patients were able to stop their NSAID without a flare. An earlier dose-response trial by the same team, published in the same journal, found that the higher of two fish oil doses produced more clinical improvement than the lower dose, which is exactly what you'd want to see if the effect is real.
On curcumin, Dr. Binu Chandran and Dr. Ajay Goel ran a small randomized pilot trial comparing 500 mg of curcumin against diclofenac (a prescription NSAID) in 45 rheumatoid arthritis patients. Published in Phytotherapy Research, the curcumin group actually showed the largest improvement in disease activity scores of the three groups, including outperforming the diclofenac-only group. A more recent 2024 trial by Dr. Fatemeh Pourhabibi-Zarandi and colleagues gave 500 mg of curcumin daily to 48 women with rheumatoid arthritis for 8 weeks, published in Phytotherapy Research. Tender joint count, swollen joint count, and pain scores all dropped significantly compared to placebo.
There are some good results for fish oil and curcumin for rheumatoid arthritis. It's not exactly the same thing as psoriatic arthritis, but it might be helpful. It's certainly worth a trial to see if it would help you. The good thing is that there are proven benefits of these two supplements, even if they don't help with joint pain. So, it won't be a waste to try them.
What About Serrapeptase?
Serrapeptase doesn't show up on most psoriatic arthritis remedy lists, but it's worth mentioning here too, because it works on a different part of the problem than curcumin or omega-3. It's a proteolytic enzyme that breaks down dead or damaged protein, including fibrin buildup around inflamed tissue. The clearest clinical evidence for serrapeptase is in post-surgical swelling and sinus inflammation, not joint disease specifically. If occasional swelling is part of your picture, it's a reasonable tool to have on hand. It isn't a substitute for the diet and omega-3 research above, and it hasn't been tested in psoriatic arthritis directly either.
Putting It Together
If you're managing psoriatic arthritis and want a natural approach backed by something more than a repeated list, here's the honest summary: three separate trials done directly in PsA patients all point to weight loss being potent “medicine.” The largest effect came from the most aggressive approach, a very low energy diet that took off nearly 19% of body weight and nearly doubled the rate of remission. A ketogenic pattern also outperformed Mediterranean on inflammatory markers in a smaller trial, possibly because it also cuts gluten, and calorie-controlled weight loss did more for joints than adding fish oil on top of it in a third. Omega-3 and curcumin have strong, high-dose clinical support in rheumatoid arthritis and are reasonable additions while direct PsA research catches up. And the gut-skin-joint connection is real and mechanistically plausible, even though the intervention trials there are still early. That's not as tidy as a 22-item checklist. It's just what's actually in the research.
Quick Answers
Is there a natural remedy proven to work for psoriatic arthritis specifically? Diet and weight loss are the best-tested natural interventions. Three trials in PsA patients found that a very low energy diet, a ketogenic diet, and calorie-controlled weight loss all improved disease activity markers, with the very low energy diet showing the largest effect. Most other commonly listed remedies, including curcumin and fish oil, are backed by strong research in related conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, not PsA trials directly.
Can psoriatic arthritis go into remission naturally? One clinical study found that patients who lost a median of 18.6% of their body weight nearly doubled their rate of reaching minimal disease activity, from 29% to 54%. That's not the same as guaranteed remission for everyone, and individual results do vary. But it's a real, evidence-backed intervention, used alongside whatever medical care you and your doctor decide is right.
Does an anti-inflammatory diet help psoriatic arthritis? The strongest direct PsA evidence favors calorie reduction and weight loss generally, with one trial finding a ketogenic pattern outperformed Mediterranean on inflammatory markers specifically, possibly related to gluten and zonulin. Both are anti-inflammatory approaches; the research is still narrowing down which pattern matters most.
Hallelujah Diet Perspective
Why so many autoimmune diseases? We have strayed a long way from God's original diet, and we don't have the Garden of Eden to live in either.
God designed our body to function beautifully, but we have corrupted our way. The good news is that you can take steps today to begin recovering your health. Check out our resources, like the Foundations class, the Get Started Kit, or, if you just want to learn more about us, the Start Here page.
We're here to support you on your journey to recover your health, so that you can do the things you were created to enjoy. We want you to thrive in every way possible.
We would love to hear your stories of success so together we can shout, “Hallelujah!”
References
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Amorim GM, Ricardo Werner Castro G, Carneiro S. Study of the Gut Microbiome in Patients with Psoriatic Arthritis. Eur J Rheumatol. 2024;11(2):46-52. PMID: 39576066. DOI: 10.5152/eurjrheum.2024.23080
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Klingberg E, Bilberg A, Björkman S, Hedberg M, Jacobsson L, Forsblad-d'Elia H, Carlsten H, Eliasson B, Larsson I. Weight loss improves disease activity in patients with psoriatic arthritis and obesity: an interventional study. Arthritis Res Ther. 2019;21(1):17. PMID: 30635024. DOI: 10.1186/s13075-019-1810-5
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Chandran B, Goel A. A randomized, pilot study to assess the efficacy and safety of curcumin in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis. Phytother Res. 2012;26(11):1719-1725. PMID: 22407780. DOI: 10.1002/ptr.4639
Pourhabibi-Zarandi F, Rafraf M, Zayeni H, Asghari-Jafarabadi M, Ebrahimi AA. The efficacy of curcumin supplementation on serum total antioxidant capacity, malondialdehyde, and disease activity in women with rheumatoid arthritis: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Phytother Res. 2024;38(7):3552-3563. PMID: 38699839. DOI: 10.1002/ptr.8225
